Learn All About SOPA: Why Wiki and WordPress Closed for the Day
January 18, 2012 6 Comments
WordPress.org put together this excellent video explaining how the new SOPA & PIPA anti-piracy laws work and why they’re dangerous to all internet users:
- Entire websites like youtube, google, wikipedia, and facebook can be shut down completely; just because one of their users violates the new laws. And this can be done without any prior notice of violation.
- A person can go to jail for five years just by singing a song and posting it on youtube.
Mashable [link] did an excellent job summarizing the threats of the proposed bills:
This means, for example, if you upload a video to YouTube of you singing a popular song, and that song might sell for $1, and your video gets 2,500 views, you are guilty of felony copyright infringement. Furthermore, you can tack on “willful infringement for commercial gain or valued at more than $1,000.”
This would make you a felon, and if a copyright holder were to bring a suit against you, would give you a criminal record that would make it virtually impossible to gain future employment, and may subject you to up to three years in prison for singing a song. You don’t have to receive any money. You don’t have to gain anything from your video. Simply receiving 2,500 views on a song you sung, which happens to have copyright held by someone else, makes you a felon.
I suggest you read Mashable’s article, especially the section that deals with Non-US websites, and how owners could lose ownerships of their sites and domains, even without notification or ability to legally defend themselves in courts.
The poposed bills won’t affect us in Kuwait directly, mostly because we don’t really own or operate any websites. The main effect will be on our use of servers based in other counties and payment companies (like paypal and VISA). In the end, there’s no doubt that these new laws will have a tremendous negative impact on all our online experiences: websites will have more user censorship, and there will be less websites on the net.
Note: SOPA is the Stop Online Piracy Act presented to congress, while PIPA is the Protect IP Act presented to the Senate.
An aide to Rep. Smith said, “This bill does not make it a felony for a person to post a video on YouTube of their children singing to a copyrighted song. The bill specifically targets websites dedicated to illegal or infringing activity. Sites that host user content—like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter—have nothing to be concerned about under this legislation.
i really wish some people do their HW before talking none sense. the article you posted is full of misconceptions.
The article I posted has a link to the proposed bill… Go there and read the proposed “law”, rather than relying on the hearsay and he said\she said analogy.
What’s in the bill is what’ll be in the law, not what a senator or congressman says in a press release or to his friends.
And what’s your problem with the whole do your HM thing? You sound like a disgruntled student trying to get back at his teachers.
This isn’t a debating class, it’s a blog. You can get your point across in nicer ways.
duuuuuude… you misunderstood me. I when I wrote i wish some people would do some HW I was not talking about you. I was talking about the guy who wrote the article and to the people agreeing with him in the comments.
la tso2een il dhun. anyway, I read some excerpts from the proposed bill. and its highly misunderstood. either way, it wont get passed. sorry if i upset you.
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